For some reason, disposable email address services and TDMA-style challenge response systems are classified separately from filtering tools by the tech media. There are conceptual differences, but it's all "anti-spam". When they go on to equate filtering tools with "anti-spam" software, giving the impression that they're doing a comprehensive treatment of ways to fight spam, it can be misleading.
There's no reason not to multiple approaches simultaneously, of course. It would be refreshing to see one of these articles at least point that out, though....
Unless you go with one of the free/open source licenses out there, you pretty much need to come up with a license agreement -- really, you should talk to a lawyer about that.
You should also talk to a lawyer and an accountant about setting up your books and business entity.
Or, you could do what we do at spamgourmet -- that is, go ahead and put up artwork that the developers did. It looks so bad that the artists will volunteer to rework it all (we're currently undergoing a rework now:)).
The new site will definitetly have links to the artist's site, so there's some no-cost promotion involved.
So... 1) get out the crayons and the scanner 2) slap something up 3) sit back and wait, countering frequent expressions of ridicule with offers to volunteer 4) art!
I've been using the Treo 600 for a few months now (I used the 180 before that). It *has* replaced a number of the functions that were previously provided by my desktop. I use it for email and a lot of web browsing (mostly news sites). I've started reading "e-books" on it (never did that on the desktop, actually), and it provides about 100% of my contact tracking and calendar functionality.
Just having a simple text editor with me at all times is huge. I've also got an ssh client running, so there's basically nothing I can't do in the area of remote admin.
I've found that I'm in front of the computer significantly less now. I still use it for development (eclipse won't run on the treo:)), but that's about the only thing I *have* to go back ot the pc for.
Here's Hormel's policy on the use of the word "spam" to describe uce and the like. You're not supposed to use it in all caps, but other than that, they generally don't mind. Refreshing -- got to hand it to them...
I just had the urge to flame myself, so here's the rest of it:
It's very easy to take the analogy between material construction and software construction too far. There are very real differences. But I think it would be helpful to examine it with regard to professional association.
Questions that present themselves are: There are penalties for performing work that should be carried out by a professional engineer if you're not one. We'd have to have those for software, too. But where is the line? If I write a shell script for myself, do I need to get a signed approval from a professional? How about if I publish the script? How about if the published script is incorporated into a larger, critical system? Finding the line here will be tough, but it must be possible. Engineering (and medicine, and law, etc.) have had hundreds of years of experience at finding the line, and software has had none. Perhaps an analogy to professional accounting or law would be helpful here -- I can prepare my own financial statements or represent myself up to a point. But where other stakeholders are involved (a public company, for instance), I must bring in a professional. So, I can write and use my own shell script, but at the point it is to become incorporated into a system that will affect others, it needs to be subjected to approval by a professional (not by me, necessarily, but by the owner of the system), and so on.
I agree. A union could probably throw some great parties while employers set up contracts with overseas companies, but that's about it. How do you prevent them from just ignoring the union? Import/export controls? On software? Nobody wants that and it won't work very well anyway. We need only look to the tenets of free software/open source to see how an attempt to control the movement of software this way could backfire.
A professional association is a much better idea. I'm a member of my state bar association (IAAL), as well as being a developer, and there could be many parallels. Looking at the professional engineering scene is probably an even closer match.
States license Professional Engineers, and require their supervision/approval for all sorts of things like building bridges and buildings. The PEs run firms that employ young engineers who work under the supervision of the firm owners. Those young engineers eventually meet the qualifications for licensure themselves. Sure, certain PEs can farm out their work overseas, but most don't, recognizing that the long term survival of the *profession* requires that they pass on the knowledge and eventually the licensure locally.
Is the creation of software an activity that should be regulated in the same way that construction is? I think it's easy to say *yes*.
By day, I work on software that is used by big companies to trade commodities and keep track of all the deals and money they're into. The software is not free, of course, and I can't complain about the salary I get for working on it. One point that shouldn't be lost -- this software owes its very existence to oodles of free software that has enabled the infrastructure upon which it is built. There's no doubt in my mind that the opportunities for creating this money-making software would not exist if all previous software were proprietary. What would the Internet be like? Would there be an Internet?
By night (sometimes) I work on software that is free, both as in speech and as in beer. I use it, people all over the place use it, Aunt Millie uses it (maybe), and perhaps even people working for the same companies who buy my $DAYJOB software use it. Nobody makes money off it, and it (hopefully) helps people enjoy their experiences on the 'net more.
Is there a contradiction here? I don't think so. The $DAYJOB software and the nighttime software are *categorically* different from one another. Software such as the nighttime stuff has become a part of lifestyle. Even if my livelihood didn't owe itself to the pre-existence of free software (see above), I could justify my free work the same way I'd justify a piece of art or music that I had composed. But -- of course -- I do feel the obligation to give back to the pool that enabled my current livelihood. If you're in a similar situation -- so should you!
Email is all or nothing. You either accept that by having an email account you will receive everyting that is sent that address or you don't have one.
You should check out spamgourmet and similar services.
But if you were going to hack your car...
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
why not extend the control up to a little UI that is accessible from the driver's seat? Assuming the car will respond to "hot" changes in chip instructions, you could, for instance, drive around most of the day in great gas mileage mode, but when you notice you're being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp, you can make an immediate adjustment to max horsepower. After you get away, you switch back to economy mode because you'll burn up your engine if you don't.
yeah, shoot. There's should be a way to frustrate it by requiring referer info (which would shut out people who don't send it), or something like that.
We *just* added captcha functionality at spamgourmet but we're using a random number at the end of each quizword, and we use a random filename for each image. The code just went up on sourceforge if you want to take a look.
yeah, and Hurricane Electric got listed by SPEWS, too, which blocks spamgourmet a spam *fighting* disposable email service. I freaked at first, but the fallout doesn't seem that bad -- maybe nobody's using SPEWS.
Look - it's easy to say "you should move or force your ISP to change" -- but that's really not an option for most operations. Moving is *expensive* - say you move to another ISP (a nightmare to begin with), and there are service problems, etc. -- more cost. And after you're happily settled in, what if SPEWS blocks the new ISP? Start over?
Further, if you're small in terms of $$$ (like spamgourmet is -- very small), the current ISP isn't about to listen. Why should they?
This method just has too many *externalities* - it puts the cost of spamming on many people who don't do it, and are maybe even fighting against it. It creates bitter factions and ill will toward spam fighters in general. That's not good.
As someone said here, these tactics would be perfect for a spammer to use...
This is so not offtopic. We've all seen the "not invented here" attitude copped by most developers when presented with a bunch of code to extend or interface with.
I once was involved with a well documented, clean framework for creating small applications. It cost a lot of money. Looking through it the first couple of times, I scoffed, thinking about 1) how trivial it must have been to churn it out, and 2) how many ways it was probably screwed up and how I would have handled those situations. Time went by, and after zapping out a few of the little apps in surprisingly short time, I had to change my tune (fortunately, I wasn't too vocal about it earlier).
Human nature? Developer nature? I don't know, but it's definitely a force to be reckoned with.
It will soon be about 2^30 (1 billion, not 2 billion) seconds since 1970 (do the arithmetic).
It's not a billion seconds, it's 1,073,741,824 seconds -- right?
and we are close:
perl -e "print time();" 1072061932
1 365 day year is 60*60*24*365 = 31,536,000
seconds.
there are 8 leap years in there, and probably a few leap seconds, sure, but:
1,000,000,000 / 31,536,000 = 31.70979 years to hit 1 billion seconds.
1970 + 31.7 years puts us in September 2001. Randall Schwartz called this event U1E9 (unsigned 10 to the 9th power?) - there were a few glitches (mostly sorting related), but I've still got all my canned goods and batteries.
Larry Seltzer did a similar job with a review of disposable email address services in PC Magazine.
Spamgourmet (open source and free to use) was lined up against several commercial offerings, and was rated the lowest. It was clear from the review that he didn't spend much time learning about how spamgourmet works -- he wound up faulting it for perceived problems that were addressed by features that he ignored in the review.
Not to be cynical, but if I were a tech reviewer, I might be afraid of lawsuits resulting from my reviews -- open source projects have no revenue, and therefore can't prove up any damages in court. This might make me more likely to choose the open source alternative to get the shaft. Hopefully that's not what's going on here, but you've got to wonder...
Definitely Word autocorrect -- maybe there's a MS Word plugin for Eclipse:) or (more probably, of course) maybe it was all retyped at the laywers' office -- they *do* bill by the hour, after all
Slashdot Mirror
For some reason, disposable email address services and TDMA-style challenge response systems are classified separately from filtering tools by the tech media. There are conceptual differences, but it's all "anti-spam". When they go on to equate filtering tools with "anti-spam" software, giving the impression that they're doing a comprehensive treatment of ways to fight spam, it can be misleading.
There's no reason not to multiple approaches simultaneously, of course. It would be refreshing to see one of these articles at least point that out, though....
*my* cat has a PhD and runs a sinister multinational corporation
Unless you go with one of the free/open source licenses out there, you pretty much need to come up with a license agreement -- really, you should talk to a lawyer about that.
You should also talk to a lawyer and an accountant about setting up your books and business entity.
Or, you could do what we do at spamgourmet -- that is, go ahead and put up artwork that the developers did. It looks so bad that the artists will volunteer to rework it all (we're currently undergoing a rework now :)).
The new site will definitetly have links to the artist's site, so there's some no-cost promotion involved.
So...
1) get out the crayons and the scanner
2) slap something up
3) sit back and wait, countering frequent expressions of ridicule with offers to volunteer
4) art!
Aren't we all on low carb diets anyway?
I've been using the Treo 600 for a few months now (I used the 180 before that). It *has* replaced a number of the functions that were previously provided by my desktop. I use it for email and a lot of web browsing (mostly news sites). I've started reading "e-books" on it (never did that on the desktop, actually), and it provides about 100% of my contact tracking and calendar functionality.
:)), but that's about the only thing I *have* to go back ot the pc for.
Just having a simple text editor with me at all times is huge. I've also got an ssh client running, so there's basically nothing I can't do in the area of remote admin.
It runs moria!
I've found that I'm in front of the computer significantly less now. I still use it for development (eclipse won't run on the treo
use spamgourmet, then you don't have to worry about the checkboxes.
:) ]
[disclaimer: I'm associated with spamgourmet -- if that bugs you, please *don't* follow the link
Here's Hormel's policy on the use of the word "spam" to describe uce and the like. You're not supposed to use it in all caps, but other than that, they generally don't mind. Refreshing -- got to hand it to them...
I just had the urge to flame myself, so here's the rest of it:
It's very easy to take the analogy between material construction and software construction too far. There are very real differences. But I think it would be helpful to examine it with regard to professional association.
Questions that present themselves are: There are penalties for performing work that should be carried out by a professional engineer if you're not one. We'd have to have those for software, too. But where is the line? If I write a shell script for myself, do I need to get a signed approval from a professional? How about if I publish the script? How about if the published script is incorporated into a larger, critical system? Finding the line here will be tough, but it must be possible. Engineering (and medicine, and law, etc.) have had hundreds of years of experience at finding the line, and software has had none. Perhaps an analogy to professional accounting or law would be helpful here -- I can prepare my own financial statements or represent myself up to a point. But where other stakeholders are involved (a public company, for instance), I must bring in a professional. So, I can write and use my own shell script, but at the point it is to become incorporated into a system that will affect others, it needs to be subjected to approval by a professional (not by me, necessarily, but by the owner of the system), and so on.
I agree. A union could probably throw some great parties while employers set up contracts with overseas companies, but that's about it. How do you prevent them from just ignoring the union? Import/export controls? On software? Nobody wants that and it won't work very well anyway. We need only look to the tenets of free software/open source to see how an attempt to control the movement of software this way could backfire.
A professional association is a much better idea. I'm a member of my state bar association (IAAL), as well as being a developer, and there could be many parallels. Looking at the professional engineering scene is probably an even closer match.
States license Professional Engineers, and require their supervision/approval for all sorts of things like building bridges and buildings. The PEs run firms that employ young engineers who work under the supervision of the firm owners. Those young engineers eventually meet the qualifications for licensure themselves. Sure, certain PEs can farm out their work overseas, but most don't, recognizing that the long term survival of the *profession* requires that they pass on the knowledge and eventually the licensure locally.
Is the creation of software an activity that should be regulated in the same way that construction is? I think it's easy to say *yes*.
By day, I work on software that is used by big companies to trade commodities and keep track of all the deals and money they're into. The software is not free, of course, and I can't complain about the salary I get for working on it. One point that shouldn't be lost -- this software owes its very existence to oodles of free software that has enabled the infrastructure upon which it is built. There's no doubt in my mind that the opportunities for creating this money-making software would not exist if all previous software were proprietary. What would the Internet be like? Would there be an Internet?
By night (sometimes) I work on software that is free, both as in speech and as in beer. I use it, people all over the place use it, Aunt Millie uses it (maybe), and perhaps even people working for the same companies who buy my $DAYJOB software use it. Nobody makes money off it, and it (hopefully) helps people enjoy their experiences on the 'net more.
Is there a contradiction here? I don't think so. The $DAYJOB software and the nighttime software are *categorically* different from one another. Software such as the nighttime stuff has become a part of lifestyle. Even if my livelihood didn't owe itself to the pre-existence of free software (see above), I could justify my free work the same way I'd justify a piece of art or music that I had composed. But -- of course -- I do feel the obligation to give back to the pool that enabled my current livelihood. If you're in a similar situation -- so should you!
You should check out spamgourmet and similar services.
why not extend the control up to a little UI that is accessible from the driver's seat? Assuming the car will respond to "hot" changes in chip instructions, you could, for instance, drive around most of the day in great gas mileage mode, but when you notice you're being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp, you can make an immediate adjustment to max horsepower. After you get away, you switch back to economy mode because you'll burn up your engine if you don't.
yeah, shoot. There's should be a way to frustrate it by requiring referer info (which would shut out people who don't send it), or something like that.
We *just* added captcha functionality at spamgourmet but we're using a random number at the end of each quizword, and we use a random filename for each image. The code just went up on sourceforge if you want to take a look.
yeah, and Hurricane Electric got listed by SPEWS, too, which blocks spamgourmet a spam *fighting* disposable email service. I freaked at first, but the fallout doesn't seem that bad -- maybe nobody's using SPEWS.
Look - it's easy to say "you should move or force your ISP to change" -- but that's really not an option for most operations. Moving is *expensive* - say you move to another ISP (a nightmare to begin with), and there are service problems, etc. -- more cost. And after you're happily settled in, what if SPEWS blocks the new ISP? Start over?
Further, if you're small in terms of $$$ (like spamgourmet is -- very small), the current ISP isn't about to listen. Why should they?
This method just has too many *externalities* - it puts the cost of spamming on many people who don't do it, and are maybe even fighting against it. It creates bitter factions and ill will toward spam fighters in general. That's not good.
As someone said here, these tactics would be perfect for a spammer to use...
This is so not offtopic. We've all seen the "not invented here" attitude copped by most developers when presented with a bunch of code to extend or interface with.
I once was involved with a well documented, clean framework for creating small applications. It cost a lot of money. Looking through it the first couple of times, I scoffed, thinking about 1) how trivial it must have been to churn it out, and 2) how many ways it was probably screwed up and how I would have handled those situations. Time went by, and after zapping out a few of the little apps in surprisingly short time, I had to change my tune (fortunately, I wasn't too vocal about it earlier).
Human nature? Developer nature? I don't know, but it's definitely a force to be reckoned with.
spamgourmet *is* open source -- you can get the code in the "download" section of the website
It will soon be about 2^30 (1 billion, not 2 billion) seconds since 1970 (do the arithmetic).
It's not a billion seconds, it's 1,073,741,824 seconds -- right?
and we are close:
perl -e "print time();"
1072061932
1 365 day year is 60*60*24*365 = 31,536,000
seconds.
there are 8 leap years in there, and probably a few leap seconds, sure, but:
1,000,000,000 / 31,536,000 = 31.70979 years to hit 1 billion seconds.
1970 + 31.7 years puts us in September 2001. Randall Schwartz called this event U1E9 (unsigned 10 to the 9th power?) - there were a few glitches (mostly sorting related), but I've still got all my canned goods and batteries.
might just be looking for some media attention,
and getting it... If his name was misspelled, good! -- spammers should be ignored, really, though. Otherwise, we'll just create more of them.
it's said to be a D[istributed]DOS attack -- that means it came from all over, no?
check out spamgourmet for help with this.
Larry Seltzer did a similar job with a review of disposable email address services in
PC Magazine.
Spamgourmet (open source and free to use) was lined up against several commercial offerings, and was rated the lowest. It was clear from the review that he didn't spend much time learning about how spamgourmet works -- he wound up faulting it for perceived problems that were addressed by features that he ignored in the review.
Not to be cynical, but if I were a tech reviewer, I might be afraid of lawsuits resulting from my reviews -- open source projects have no revenue, and therefore can't prove up any damages in court. This might make me more likely to choose the open source alternative to get the shaft. Hopefully that's not what's going on here, but you've got to wonder...
Definitely Word autocorrect -- maybe there's a MS Word plugin for Eclipse :) or (more probably, of course) maybe it was all retyped at the laywers' office -- they *do* bill by the hour, after all
I've used ad-aware to good effect